How do you know you exist?

Both of my kids have had some interesting existential questions this past week! Let's start with 6-year-old Leo:

When cuddling for bed, Leo noticed a strange shadow on the ceiling.
me: Maybe it's a ghost.
Leo: No, it can't be a ghost. Ghosts are invisible, and they don't exist, and light goes through them so they don't cast a shadow.
me: Fair enough.

Again, Leo was telling me about things that exist and don't exist...
me: Do you exist?
Leo: Of course!
me: How do you know you exist?
Leo: What?
me: How do you know you exist?
Leo: Look at me! I'm right here!
me: Fair enough.
Leo: But before you borned me, before I grew in your tummy, I didn't exist.

Then came 8-year-old-Nico's turn:

As soon as my husband discovered that David Attenborough had a new documentary out (Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life), he immediately ordered it. Nico asked who Charles Darwin was, and my husband suggested we watch the movie and find out!

The next morning, Nico wanted to watch the documentary again. During the intro, I repeated "Charles Darwin" (mimicking the English accent), and then Nico did me one better by dramatically saying "Charles Darwin -- the guy who proved that God doesn't exist."

That had me laughing -- the documentary certainly doesn't say that! However, you can kind of see how he might get that out of it. David Attenborough reads part of the creation story from Genesis and explains that for thousands of years most of Europe thought it was an accurate description of how animals came to be. Little by little, the evidence started to pile up (geology, transitional forms, genetics, plate tectonics) showing that the Genesis account is quite wrong. You can't really tell Darwin's story completely without mentioning the reaction by defenders of the faith, but the documentary leaves the conclusion open with respect to the existence of God.

You may recall way back here that we don't really talk about God much with our kids. Since that post, Nico has started to form his own ideas about what God is from different movies. He's an interesting character in Monty Python's "Holy Grail" -- plus Nico has learned that the planets are named after different "gods," but we haven't really discussed it.

Then, in one of the hotels on our road trip to Minnesota (we just arrived today), Nico found The Holy Bible! He was so amazed -- it's the same book that David Attenborough was reading! What a rare find!
me: Actually, Nico, it's not rare at all. They're everywhere. It's the best selling book of the year, every year.
Nico: Why?
me: They're for people who believe in God.

That shocked Nico quite a bit, and he was further shocked when we explained to him that his grandparents -- who we were on our way to visit -- believe in God. Nico immediately insisted that he had to tell them that God doesn't exist! (Yikes! That's just we need for our family Christmas visit...)

So we explained to Nico that it is very important not to tell the other other family members that God doesn't exist because if they want to believe in God, they can just go right ahead and believe in God. And if they want to believe that Christmas is God's birthday (even though it isn't) they can go right ahead and believe that as well. Fortunately Nico agreed that we'd just let them believe what they want.

The whole family is together for Christmas for the first time in nearly a decade -- I expect it will be a lot of fun! Wish me luck, though.